Bhubaneswar: If you are building a house in a built-up area exceeding 500 square metres or any two-storey buildings in a rural area of Odisha, you need to seek plan approval from the district town planning unit.
However, buildings on land up to 500 square metres/G+2 height and layout plan up to 1-acre shall be exempted from plan approval. The Housing and Urban Development department has recently issued a notification making building plan approval mandatory for those areas, which do not come under the ambit of development authorities/regional improvement trusts/special planning authorities.
“Now Odisha Special Planning Authorities and Regional Improvement Trusts Common Planning and Building Standard Rules, 2017 will come into force in rural areas which will be followed for technical sanction by the district town planning unit,” read the notification.
As per norms, on receipt of the application, the Panchayat Samiti will forward it to the district town planning unit for technical sanction. The district planning units will obtain concurrence of the Director of Town Planning and accordingly, communicate the technical sanction to the concerned Panchayat Samiti for issue of final approval to the applicants.
In case of construction activities taken up without prior approval of the authorities, the buildings would be regularised by way of compounding as per the prevailing Planning and Building Standard Regulations. Further, 50 per cent of the compounding fees collected by the planning authorities will be deposited with the concerned Gram Panchayat before regularizing the building plans or with the Panchayat Samiti before technical sanction by the district town planning units, it said.
The government has introduced these rules to ensure town-like facilities and plans for rural and semi-urban areas. Usually, big buildings are being constructed in semi-urban areas and block headquarters and due to unplanned construction of such buildings, local authorities face problems while providing basic civic facilities. Therefore, the building plan norms have been made applicable for all areas of the state, revealed the said.